WHAT WEGAN DID NEXT

A few weeks ago TFF did an article on a new femme for femme dating site called "Find Femmes" that was created by Youtube stars Whitney and Megan. The lovely couple met online few years ago and maintained a long distance relationship between Hawaii and the UK. After exclusively dating for a for four years, Megan and Whitney made things official and became wife and wife in front of close friends and family. After the happy newlyweds settled into their new life, they decided to create a website that would help other queer women find love.

The site was launched in hopes of facilitating healthy relationships between feminine identified lesbian women who prefer to date other 'femmes'. After learning a little about their site and hearing more about their personal triumph with a long distance relationship, we decided to conduct an intimate interview shedding light on a number of topics that are relatable for queer identified women who are looking for love.

The Fab Femme: Tell us about how you two lovely ladies met. What was your first impression of one another, and how did you feel internally? Were there sparks?

Wegan: Well as Megan is British and Whitney is American, we met online… on Myspace in fact!! This was back in approx 2006, Whitney searched for a British postcode on Myspace to see what British girls were like, and up popped Megan’s profile by complete chance/ fate! We connected on Myspace and never thought we would actually meet, as Whitney was studying in Hawaii and Megan lives in the UK. We chatted online for a couple of years and Whitney ended up studying a semester abroad, in London! So we met the first weekend she arrived and two weeks later, in true lesbian fashion, we were officially a couple! Our first impressions were:

A few months later we embarked on a long distance relationship between the UK and Hawaii. Little did we know it would take 4 years to conquer it! But of course, it was all worth it.

TFF: That’s very interesting! What has it been like maintaining a long distance relationship while balancing careers and spending time with family and friends?

WWDN: When we were in a long distance relationship, we were both still at school- Whitney was finishing her degree and Megan was finishing her Masters. We therefore had to fit in visiting one another in between our studies! But it wasn’t too bad, as Megan got to spend three months in Hawaii finishing her dissertation.

Being long distance actually gave us the time to do our studies, where as we would have been distracted if we were nearby! And then we got to truly enjoy our time together and long summer breaks. It also gave us the time to spend with our family and friends, and then when we were reunited we’d have to cram in trying to see each others families and friends- it was always non-stop!

However being in a long distance relationship did impact on our lives, where our day-to-day lives apart didn’t feel like real life anymore. It always sucked to be out for a friends birthday or a family members wedding and not have your partner by your side! Also Megan remembers trying to finish an essay whilst having the news on the background due to a tsuamni in Hawaii!

TFF:What made you gals decide to become more serious and take steps towards building a future with one another?

WWDN: From day one, we were already pretty serious! We said “I love you” about a month or two into the relationship. We didn’t know where the future was going as we embarked on long distance, but neither of us ever questioned it. We knew that we had found “the one” and that our futures ultimately lied with each other- we just had to finish our studies first! Megan proposed to Whitney in Hawaii in 2011, and we decided that Whitney would move to the UK due to the lack of equal rights for gay couples in America at that time. Now we can get married in Hawaii and live there if we wanted to, it just wasn’t an option then.

TFF:What was coming out like for each of you?

WWDN: Despite being countries apart, we both came out around the same time in our lives. Megan was 16 and Whitney was 15. We both had a bit of a rocky start at first, with both of our mothers not accepting or happy with the fact that their pretty daughters were gay.

For Whitney it was especially difficult coming out in the South (she’s from Kentucky y’all!) She had a tough time, with gossiping and friends turning their back on her. However she grew strong from it, and decided to live her life in the rainbow state. Both of our mothers eventually came round to us being gay, once they realized that we weren’t going to live an unhappy life, and they love their daughter-in-laws like their own!

TFF: Ok, enough prying into your lives! Let’s talk about the new dating site you’ve created! Who’s idea was it to create “Find Femmes”, and how long were you ladies working on the project before its release?

WWDN: It was both of ours together really! Over the years we’ve seen so many messages from our followers come in asking the same question “how do I find a femme lesbian?” because we managed to find one another, they hope it someway that we have a secret as to where all the femmes are at, and we don’t!

We both found it hard on the dating scene trying to find another femme, so we know the struggle is real! Therefore we wanted to have a space where femmes could go and find one another, and be found!

TFF:What kind of feedback have you received from users and critics since launching the site?

WWDN: We’ve only had positive feedback from our users, which is great! At first people when we had our soft-launch, with only the front splash page with no further info, people were unsure if it was only for femmes, or only for those who identified as lesbian and bisexual but we’ve managed to make that clearer now that the full site is up. A lot of comments were “about time!” and “thank you!” We’ve had some great features, from the Huffington Post, to Advocate and Diva magazine, and of course- The Fab Femme!

TFF: What sets your site apart from other lesbian dating sites (besides the obvious theme of accommodating femme loving femmes)?

WWDN: Our passion and the story behind it- how we fell in love and want to be able to provide the same opportunity for other feminine identified LGBTQ women. We’ve tried to create the feminine feel of a site that we’d personally love to be on.

Whilst our site is aimed predominantly at femmes who like femmes, we recognise that not every femme in the world is also into femmes! So we try to be as inclusive as possible and basically- if you’re a woman who’s into femmes, then by all means join to! We also hope that it will be a community for femmes to come together as friends. We love meeting other femmes and becoming friends, so we hope many #femmeships will form also! (we can’t take credit for that, one of our fans came up with that haha!)We’re available in the UK, USA, Australia, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand and Ireland.

Our website takes safety seriously- we have a 247/365 trained moderation team who work around the clock to ensure that all profiles are genuine and to keep our members safe. We’re also part of the Online Dating Protector Initiative, which offers advice and tips on staying safe online.

TFF:That’s amazing and the space you ladies created is definitely needed. Before you two met each other, what kind of challenges did you face as feminine identified women who love other femmes?

WWDN: Ooh lordy, are you sat down? Haha! We found it difficult just being believed as gay, which we put down to the assumption of heterosexuality, even when in a gay club! Gay men would say “you’re too pretty to be gay” and lesbians looked at us like we didn’t belong. It was a catch 22, as we could never tell if the pretty girl in the bar was straight or gay either! And we’d also see the butcher lesbians going home with a femme at the end of the night and wonder if there were any other femmes out there who liked femmes too!

TFF: What are some of your thoughts on Femme invisibility, and what makes you define yourselves as femmes?

WWDN: Femme Invisibility is one of the main reasons that Megan started our blog What Wegan Did Next. Not only to document our long distance relationship but with the lack of feminine lesbian role models, to also show the world that femme couples do exist, and can lead great lives too! It’s a subject that we’ve brought light to frequently, with Megan’s article for the Huffington Post being one of the first resources on Femme Invisibility when you do a search! Plus we have a popular video on youtube “Proud to be femme”. We also run a Femme Visibility campaign on our blog, where we showcase pictures of the everyday femme lesbians and we were one of the first to start tweeting about #femmevisibilty and it’s great to see so many people doing it now!

What ‘femme’ is difficult to define, and it’s different for everyone. So for our site we say whether you love your lipstick and Louboutin heels, or lipbalm and loafers; it’s up to you as to how you define and if you feel this is the right dating spot for you. Being femme to us is conforming feminine stereotypes- we love doing our makeup, getting our hair and nails done and owning far too many clothes!